The Raft of Unspoken Things

The three of us—Mara, her fiancé Theo, and I—sat cross-legged on the worn Persian rug in Mara’s attic, the only light a guttering candle that smelled of burnt honey. The attic was a graveyard of forgotten things: a child’s rocking horse with one glass eye, a trunk of moth-eaten lace, and a grandfather clock stopped at 3:47. We had come to contact our guardian angels, a game we played to feel less alone in the world. The planchette was slick under my fingers, the wood cool and heavy.

I asked first, my voice a whisper that the rafters seemed to drink. ‘If my guardian is here, give me a sign. My name is Elian. I was told I had an uncle who died before I was born. His name was Michael? Show me a letter.’ The planchette quivered, then slid to a firm ‘M’. I gasped. ‘Was he struck by lightning?’ No. ‘A car accident?’ No. ‘A boat?’ The planchette paused, then moved to ‘B’ with such force it nearly left my fingertips. I released it, let my hands hover. It stayed on ‘B’. ‘Did he drown?’ Yes.

My heart pounded. I was three when I saw a man standing at the end of my crib, a man with wet hair and riverweed tangled in his fingers. My mother said it was a dream, but I remembered the smell of mud and rain. I asked, ‘Have I ever seen him as a child?’ Yes. ‘Did I almost drown when I was five?’ Yes. ‘Did my brother pull me out of the lake?’ Yes. The planchette moved with a certainty that made my skin crawl. ‘Have I ever almost died in my sleep from my sleep apnea?’ Yes. The memory of that dream—a hand pressing on my chest, a voice saying ‘not yet’—flooded back. I felt cold, as if the attic had dropped ten degrees.

Then Mara, her voice thin and eager, asked, ‘What will I die from?’ The planchette spun in a slow circle, then darted to ‘L’. ‘Lung cancer?’ Yes. She let out a shaky laugh. ‘At least it’s not something sudden.’ I asked, ‘Will it be painful?’ It moved to ‘N’. ‘No pain.’ ‘Will she be awake?’ Yes. ‘Will she pass before me?’ The planchette hesitated, then slid to ‘Y’. Mara’s eyes were wet, but she smiled. ‘So I’ll have time to say goodbye.’ The candle flickered, and the clock in the corner chimed—though it had been broken for years. We stared at each other, the warmth of the game gone, replaced by a suffocating closeness.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing the planchette sliding to ‘B’, to ‘Y’. At 3 a.m., I crept back to the attic, drawn by a pull I couldn’t name. The candle was still burning, though we had blown it out. The planchette sat on the board, not on ‘Goodbye’, but on the letter ‘R’. I felt a wetness on my cheek and touched it—my fingers came away slick with water, though no leak had ever been in this house. A whisper coiled from the shadows, not in words but in the creak of floorboards, the rustle of a forgotten dress. I didn’t need to ask. I knew my uncle was not a guardian angel. He was something else—a ferryman, a collector of debts, and he had marked Mara for his own. I ran down the stairs, but the attic steps seemed to lengthen, and behind me, I heard the planchette scraping across the board, spelling out a single word: ‘TOGETHER’.